One day after President Bush delivered a message of reassurance at Virginia Tech, Mayor Bloomberg today will stand beside more than a dozen mayors from New Jersey who are joining his coalition against illegal guns in a social climate vastly changed by the massacre at the university, where 32 students and professors died at the hands of a South Korean student with two guns.

The mayors will boost the membership in Mr. Bloomberg’s national coalition to nearly 200, but experts said yesterday that the shooting, the deadliest act of criminal gun violence in American history, could rally even greater support in suburban areas and small towns for New York’s mayor, who is mulling a presidential run.

Mr. Bush traveled to the Virginia campus to address an auditorium full of students, faculty members, and officials.

“It’s impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering,” the president said. “Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they’re gone — and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates, and a grieving nation.”

Mr. Bush continued: “On this terrible day of mourning, it’s hard to imagine that a time will come when life at Virginia Tech will return to normal. But such a day will come.”

Candidates to replace Mr. Bush canceled their scheduled appearances yesterday and offered condolences for the loss of life. Senator McCain, a Republican of Arizona, said the shooting didn’t change his opinions about the Second Amendment, and Senator Obama, a Democrat of Illinois, called the rampage “an opportunity to reflect.”

Authorities in Blacksburg, Va., identified the shooter as Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old English major who hailed from South Korea.
At an evening press conference, police in Blacksburg said the two handguns found next to Seung-Hui’s body were legally acquired, but their serial numbers had been filed off. The dean of Baruch College’s School of Public Affairs, David Birdsell, said the legal status of the guns was less important than the issue of safety, which is now on many Americans’ minds.

“When you have an attack that gets this kind of attention that victimizes young people in what should be a safe environment, people think about safety and availability of guns,” he said. “For all the most horrific and tragic reasons, it will help Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign.”

Spurred by the killings of two police officers with illegal guns near the beginning of his second term, Mr. Bloomberg has lobbied against guns in Washington, D.C., started his coalition of mayors against illegal guns, and sent teams of private investigators with hidden cameras to investigate out-of-state gun dealers. The city filed 27 civil lawsuits against dealers they allege broke the law while selling guns. Twelve dealers have since settled, while a legal battle is just beginning for the others, who have, along with the National Rifle Association, said his efforts were aimed at law-abiding citizens.

Governor Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat, last month signed a law that would make it illegal for Mr. Bloomberg to send investigators into the state again.

During a question-and-answer period on Staten Island, Mr. Bloomberg did not link his campaign with the shooting in Virginia, choosing instead to call yesterday a “day to grieve and to pray.”

“Mayor Bloomberg has already shown he can galvanize the support of other mayors,” the president of the Citizen’s Crime Commission, Richard Aborn, said. “This instance is going to help him get even more mayors involved.”

Still, wider policy discussions aren’t likely to make their way into higher echelons of government, a professor at New York University who studies gun control policy, James Jacobs, said.

“I don’t think anything will happen in Congress,” he said. “We have never had national laws except when we’ve had Democrats in charge both house and as president. Even that might not do anything.”

A disturbing portrait of the shooter began to emerge as teachers spoke about him on television and his work from a creative writing class was posted on the Internet.

In an 11-page play posted on AOL News titled “Mr. Brownstone,” Seung-Hui wrote about three disenchanted students wanting to kill a teacher whom they accuse of raping them. In another play, “Richard McBeef,” he portrayed an angry fight between a son, his stepfather, and his mother, which again featured themes of pedophilia and violence.

According to reports in Chosun, a newspaper in South Korea, Seung-Hui came to Centerville, Va., when he was in third grade because his family sought a better quality of life. His parents work at a laundry business in Centerville, which has a Korean population of 50,000, the newspaper reported.

The president of the Korean American Association of Greater New York, Kyong Ro Lee, said an emergency meeting had been called last night to decide how to show support for the families of the victims. Private citizens are banned from owning guns in South Korea.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said through a translator. “I feel such sadness for the families of the victims. … I am afraid people will think that he did this because he is Korean.”